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Norman Holroyd

Weightlifting Champion, Norman Holroyd, who
represented Great Britain at Berlin Olympics in
1936, trained at Bradford College Physical Culture
Club in the 1930s.

Norman was born in 1914 in Elland and started
a weightlifting club with his pals in a friend’s
cellar, later moving to various other empty rooms.
Norman then joined Bradford College Physical
Culture Club.

Despite speaking to a number of the
weightlifters who were training and competing
in West Yorkshire at the same time as Norman,
we have been unable to discover if he was ever
a student at the College. However we suspect
that club membership would have been on this
basis and since Norman was working as a cloth
processor at Norman Shaw & Sons, it seems most
likely that he attended College to study Textiles.

His training at our Physical Culture Club was
clearly very effective as he was selected for the
British Olympic weightlifting team for the Berlin
Olympics. Norman lifted in the featherweight
class. He pressed 72½kg, snatched 85kg, and
clean and jerked 105kg, weighing 58.8kg. He
came a respectable 15th in the competition
but witnessed unforgettable scenes of Adolph
Hitler and Nazi top brass visiting the athletes. He
also met the American sprinter and long jumper
Jesse Owens, who won 4 gold medals and spoilt
Hitler’s plans of turning the Olympics into a
demonstration of supposed Aryan supremacy.

He continued competing and was British
Champion 9 times. In April 1937 he became the
first English weightlifter to lift double his body
weight using the clean and jerk method, lifting
120kg when he weighed only 60kg. Over 70 years
later no other Yorkshire lifter has beaten this
record.
Norman came joint second in the World
Weightlifting Championships in Paris in 1937
and was a member of the GB team that
defeated Germany in 1938 and France in
1939.

His sporting career was then put on hold
for the duration of WWII, Norman served on
minesweepers. Resuming training after the war he
was selected for the London Olympics in 1948 but
was unable to compete after sustaining an injury.
He retired from competition in 1950.

Norman spent 33 years working for Nu Swift
International and was their Chief Quality
Controller when he retired in 1979.
Norman died in June 2002.

We are grateful to Ian Hampson, YNECAWLA
General Secretary, for supplying the photographs
of Norman and for putting us in touch with so
many of his contemporaries.